


Part 9: Preparations

by kw20742



Series: Something Like Love [10]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Developing Relationship, F/F, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 03:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kw20742/pseuds/kw20742
Summary: Missing scenes from 2.7, the day of The Picnic.Naomi Replansky’s “The Oasis” can be found in her Collected Poems, published by Godine/Black Sparrow Books. Copyright © 2012.





	Part 9: Preparations

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scenes from 2.7, the day of The Picnic. 
> 
> Naomi Replansky’s “The Oasis” can be found in her Collected Poems, published by Godine/Black Sparrow Books. Copyright © 2012.

Jocelyn is fumbling with the photocopier in the barristers’ shared office space down the hall from the robing room at the courthouse. She intentionally arrived just a bit early this morning to get this one thing done before Ben arrives, before Sharon and her junior get here, before prying eyes wonder what the hell a senior QC is doing making her own photocopies.

But this has nothing to do with work. This is for Maggie. Beloved Maggie. And so she must do it herself. It is a point of pride. Plus, if all goes as planned, and Maggie is willing to accept her apology, willing to begin again, she wants to be able to brag that she conquered the confounded photocopier at Wessex Crown Court.

If only she knew how to use this ridiculous contraption! She squints at the small LED screen. If only she could actually see the tiny print. When did these things get so bloody complicated?! She doesn’t need to scan, email, or fax. She doesn’t need anything double-sided, collated, or stapled. She doesn’t need tabloid size. She doesn’t even need it to microwave her now-lukewarm tea, which it could probably do, as multifaceted as it is. She just needs one photocopy of one page in one book! And preferably before everyone else gets here. The words on this page she needs copied are meant for one person, and one person only.

Now that Jocelyn’s finally worked out how and when she’s going to confess her sins to Maggie, all the years of planning, of preparing, of wishing she were brave enough, have come down to this one interminably frustrating moment in which the photocopier will not do precisely the thing it was invented to do, the only thing she needs it to do, which is copy one bloody page!

Glancing down at her watch, she takes a step back from the infernal machine and inhales deeply, flexing her fingers, attempting to calmly reset her focus. And, if she must, send positive vibes or whatever to this inanimate object that has become, so far today, her chief obstacle to happiness.

What she really wants to do is throw the stupid thing out the nearest window.

“Jocelyn?” Ben asks bemusedly as he deposits his laptop and briefcase on the desk he’s been assigned for the duration of the trial, “What are you…?”

But he need not continue as she turns sharply around to face him. He’s more than familiar with that look. The one somewhere between murderous, panicked, and annoyed. He’s seen it often enough on the faces of senior barristers from Cornwall to Kent when confronted with all this new office equipment that, even he has to admit, is often far too fancy to be of any real use. Jocelyn’s look, he notes, is on the ‘murderous’ end of the spectrum.

“Can I help?” he asks, shrugging off his coat.

“Ben! Yes, please,” she replies, quickly removing the small paperback book out from under the lid of the copier and remembering her manners as he approaches, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he replies, noting with raised eyebrows Jocelyn’s not-so-subtle secrecy about whatever it is she’s trying to copy.

She pretends not to notice that he noticed. Forcing her tone into a calm patience she does not feel, she asks, “Would you show me how to use this silly machine, please? I just need to make a copy.”

“Of course,” he replies eagerly with a little chuckle, reaching for the book in Jocelyn’s hand.

“No,” she insists, concealing it behind her back and out of his reach, “I just need you to show me, please. Which buttons to push. In which order.”

“Okay.” And he proceeds, for the next five or so minutes to walk her slowly and methodically through (what he even admits are) the far too many steps to get the simple job done.

She watches closely, sipping her tea and shaking her head while miming and talking through the steps along with him, until she’s semi-confident. At which point, she says, “Thank you, Ben. I think I can manage from here,” and sends him on his way.

He heads over to his desk, giving Jocelyn her privacy to copy whatever it is she’s got over there. He can’t admit to not being desperately curious, though, and he glances furtively across to the other side of the room several times as he readies his laptop for the day’s work.

His senior is a deeply private person, and, despite having spent hours upon hours sitting across from her at her dining room table over the last month or so, he actually knows hardly anything about her. But he does know at least this: All the rumours, good and bad, are true. She is brilliant, demanding, exacting, highly logical, unfailingly ethical, and the very embodiment of integrity.

The flip side to these qualities that make her a truly fantastic litigator is that she’s also a complete nightmare when she wants to be.

He’s learned a lot from her, though, and he’s incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with her. To have _survived_ working with her. He’s almost sorry the trial is coming to an end, and he’s hoping they might work together again. If she takes on other briefs.

“Closing arguments today,” he states, making conversation as he begins unpacking his briefcase, laying a stack of file folders on the desk in front of him. “How’re you feeling?”

She lets out a soft grunt, mostly to herself. Having finally accomplished her task at the copier, she’s now at the tall worktable in the centre of the room, leaning over the resulting photocopy, pen in hand.

Little does he know her speech is the least of her concerns today. It’s prepared well and ready to go. In addition to fine-tuning it with and for Ben several times last night, she practiced it a few times after he left and once in the shower this morning. It’s good. Forceful. Summative. Efficient. And, she hopes, effective. She’s done the best she could with what she had, and now there remains only this last hurdle. Which isn’t really a hurdle, she’s done it so many times. Plus, she knows she’s brilliant. A colleague (a former lover, really, a brief, passionate affair years before she met Maggie) had once described her closing arguments as ‘mesmerizing.’ She’s never forgotten that, and she has no doubt whatsoever that today’s speech will be just as spectacular.

Now, if someone were to ask her what’s really on her mind today, what _is_ worrying her, it would be the picnic she’s planning for later this evening. Well, not so much the picnic, itself. They’ve eaten together so many times, and although Jocelyn’s not the cook Maggie is, she’s not going to poison anyone. So that doesn’t worry her. And it’s not supposed to rain. But despite the fifteen years she’s had to decide how to tell Maggie she’s been in love with her all this time, she’s still not quite sure how to say it. The words to use. Because words just aren’t good enough.

And after that, she needs to apologize. That will be harder.

She stashes the book back in her bag, and finally writes, below the lines of printed text on the single white page, “Meet me on our bench at 8? I have a surprise for you. J.”

That will have to do. She doesn’t want to provide too many details and give her plans away. She has also no interest in fighting the photocopier again for another copy, and she wrote her little note in pen. So, there it is. She grabs a plain white envelope from the little stack of various office supplies provided for use by the legal teams, folds into thirds the photocopied page containing her note, slips it in, seals the flap, and scrawls, “Maggie” across the front.

Now, how to get it to her? She wants to give Maggie time to plan her day. This week’s edition of the _Echo_ went to press late last night, so unless something unusual comes up, its editor should have a few free hours this evening. Jocelyn looks back down at her watch. 9:10. Twenty minutes until the start of session. If she goes out front now, she might have to fend off the Latimers. And even if she doesn’t, it won’t do for the Crown Prosecutor to be seen passing a note to the editor of the Broadchurch _Echo_. She can count on one hand the number of people who even realize they know each other, and she’d rather keep it that way. For the moment. Until she’s sure of Maggie. Plus, she still needs to get into her ‘finery,’ as Maggie calls it.

So does Ben, but maybe he wouldn’t mind doing this one thing for her. So, she decides to ask: “Ben, I wonder if you’d mind doing me a quick favour? It’s nothing to do with the case, so if you don’t feel comfortable…”

“Well, ask me,” he chides jovially, “and I’ll let you know.”

She holds out the sealed envelope, hoping he won’t ask any questions about his mission. “Would you bring this to Maggie Radcliffe, please? She should be here by now. And wait for an answer?”

“Will do,” he grins, now that he’s got an inkling about what Jocelyn’s been up to this morning. He’s more than happy to play cupid for these two. The way they look at each other is unmistakable. And, he suspects with a soft chuckle, no one else in the world would’ve been able to get away with the stunt Ms. Radcliffe pulled the other night, forcing Jocelyn to tell him about her eyes. Although whatever’s between them is theirs, and theirs alone, he’s happy to play even a small role in their story.

For her part, Jocelyn is beyond grateful for his discretion. And his kindness.

But he’s no sooner out the door than she realizes too late that she could just as easily have texted Maggie. This whole ‘passing a note’ thing makes it seem as if they’re in secondary school, for goodness sake! What was she thinking?! She has to get that envelope back! Panicking slightly, she gathers her coat, briefcase, and bag to go after him, but he’s already rounded the corner and is likely halfway across the very public lobby by now. Bollocks. But she wouldn’t have been able to send the _poem_ via text, so…

 

***

Maggie, predictably, is in line for coffee (because caffeine, petal) when Ben approaches her, sealed white envelope in hand.

“Good morning, Ms. Radcliffe.”

“Ben!,” she greets him with a warm smile, “Morning! But please, ‘Maggie’ is fine. Or, if you like,” she teases, eyes glinting, “Supreme Goddess of the Universe. You pick.” Oh, my, she is in fine form this morning! Even if she does have to say so herself. Poor Ben. He’s a good chap, but, oh, so serious.

Ben laughs nervously. He likes Ms. Radcliffe—Maggie—enormously. She’s smart. Witty. Politically astute. And she advocates for him with Jocelyn, he knows. But he’s never quite sure how to respond to her awesome confidence, her wry sense of humour. Frankly, she intimidates him. Which is rather ironic given that he can handle himself just nicely with her spiky barrister friend. He clears his throat awkwardly and, holding out the envelope, explains, “Jocelyn asked me to put this in your hands. And to wait for an answer.”

“Oh?!” Eyebrows raised in delighted but wary surprise, she takes the envelope from him, slowly tears the flap open, and pulls out the paper inside. It’s a photocopy of a poem. By, according to the byline, American poet Naomi Replanksy. “How in the world,” Maggie wonders to herself, “does Jocelyn Knight know Replansky?” She shakes her head with an affectionate smirk. The mysteries keep piling up.

Aware that Ben is watching her, waiting for her, that he’s likely got some last-minute work to do before the start of session, and that she’s next in line at the till, she skips the poem itself for the moment. She knows that Jocelyn’s choice of this text is sure to be no accident, and she wants time to savour it, unobserved and uninterrupted. So she reluctantly forces her eyes to jump down to the handwritten note at the bottom, scrawled in the way that only Jocelyn can: “Meet me on our bench at 8? I have a surprise for you. J.” She snorts: Jocelyn should have been doctor for all that anyone can read her handwriting.

She refolds the paper and puts it back in its envelope with more outward composure than she feels. Her insides are doing cartwheels, and the rush of heat to her core is back with a vengeance. But she’s got to pull herself together! First, she’s in line for coffee. In the lobby of Wessex Crown Court. It will not do to melt in a puddle of giddy desire right here. Second, she’s got a long day of work ahead, and she’s got to be on her game. Third, Ben is waiting quite patiently to take her response back to Jocelyn. Fourth, and most importantly, she’s got to prepare. For this evening. She mustmustmust talk to Jocelyn. About letting her in, not shutting her out, before anything else can happen between them. And she suspects Jocelyn’s got a slightly different agenda. Not incompatible. Necessarily. Just different. But it _could_ be incompatible, and that she can’t—doesn’t want to—think about right now, either.

And then it’s her turn to order. She gestures to the array of beverages and baked goods at the little kiosk and asks Ben, “Can I get you something?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“Morning, petal,” she says to the young chap at the till. “One proper coffee, no foam. And one of those caramel latte things. Cheers.” She digs into her purse to pay, and, inhaling deeply, turns to Ben at the same time, responding quite simply, “Tell her: Yes.”

Ben nods and heads back across the lobby to the robing room, stopping briefly on the way to lend a word of support to the Latimers, who are just clearing security behind Olly.

Maggie carefully folds the envelope in half and stashes it in her jacket pocket. For safekeeping to savour later. Olly is by her side just as the coffees are up, and she hands him his latte. “Here’s… Whatever this is,” she says drily. These fancy concoctions really are beyond her.

“Thanks,” Olly grins, taking the cup from his boss as they head in the direction of the Latimers. “Closing arguments today!” he exclaims with far too much verve for her taste, “Whatchya think?”

“Morning, petal,” she responds with all the excitement of an old, crusty reporter who’s been around the block. The long way. Uphill. Many, many, times.

She’s felt the need since this trial’s begun to intentionally aim (at least on the outside) for as much apathy as she can muster as a way to counter Olly’s often insufferably inappropriate zeal. As she and Jocelyn discussed over dinner the night before it started, an event like this is what they’ve all trained for, but when it comes, it’s important to keep things in perspective. If for no other reason than out of respect. What’s ‘just work’ to reporters and barristers is an enormous trauma to the families involved. She’s learned to be mindful of that, and she’s determined to drill the lesson into Oliver if it kills her.

Plus, her answer to his question today is personal rather than professional. What does she think? She thinks—no, she _knows_ —that Jocelyn will not disappoint this morning. That she will, especially given the hometown crowd, pull out all the stops, complete with emphatic gestures, anticipatory silences, and dramatic inflections in all the right places. Olly has no idea what he’s in for. He also has no idea that he has no idea, poor boy, having no other closing arguments with which to compare Jocelyn’s impending performance.

Maggie knows, too, that, even if Jocelyn does decide to take on more cases after this (and she will, if Maggie has any say in the matter), it’s likely that this is the last official, professional opportunity that Maggie will have of watching her favorite barrister in action. So she’s going to let herself enjoy it, ludicrous wig and all.

She’s also thinking of that first time she saw Jocelyn in court, more than twenty-five years ago now at the Old Bailey, how she tried to talk herself out of becoming infatuated, and how life works in mysterious ways. Here they are, on the brink of… Something. Again. How, she wonders, will she possibly get through this day knowing that she has to wait until eight o’clock to be alone with Jocelyn. To ask her to let her love her?

So, what does she think? Inhaling, she decides, finally, to admit to Olly, “I think we’re in for quite a treat. Now,” she admonishes in a whisper as they fall into step behind the Latimers on the way up to the courtroom, “be professional.”

 

***  
She and Olly have just settled into their assigned seats in the courtroom’s press section when the barristers’ teams file in. As Jocelyn arrives at her chair, she gently (but, Maggie suspects, quite deliberately) swings it round in such a way that she has to turn in Maggie’s direction to put it right again. In that split second, Maggie’s heart just about leaps out of her chest at the pointed look Jocelyn sends her from across the room. It is clearly a challenge, and a promise, issued in raised eyebrows and a soft smile. But barely before she registers it, it’s gone, and Jocelyn has turned back toward the front of the room as the bailiff invites those present to rise for the judge.

 

***  
It’s not until the first break, called after Jocelyn’s captivating performance (Maggie freely admits to the possibility that she may be just a little biased, but, from the perspective of a former crime reporter, the prosecution’s closing argument was really quite excellent; she expected no less), that Maggie has a chance to head outside for a cigarette break.

At least that’s what she told Olly and Beth, dramatically waving her e-cig on the way out the side door, moving quickly to refuse them an opportunity to sideline her. She’s spent most breaks during the trial in (at least) one of four ways: keeping tabs on Olly to make sure his live blogging is up to her exacting editorial standards, ensuring that other news events across south Dorset haven’t been neglected in the wake of the Miller trial, working with Lucy to manage the day-to-day back at the office in Broadchurch, and/or being mum to Beth, talking the Latimers through all the various ups and downs and twists and turns going on in the courtroom.

As much as she’ll miss watching Jocelyn work, she’ll be happy not to have to drive to Bournemouth every day. And she’s more than ready to go back to covering ‘mundane’ things like sports days and school plays; that’s one of the reasons she moved to Dorset in the first place. She covered the Yorkshire Ripper (and still has the frequent-enough nightmares to prove it). She covered the national miners’ strike, Greenham, and Princess Diana’s funeral. And she won a Press Gazette award along the way. The last thing she expected when she moved to sleepy Broadchurch was to be at the centre of another major national story. It’s an opportunity she would gladly have done without; she’s seen far too much of people being horrible to each other.

But then again, without this bloody trial, she and Jocelyn may not ever have tried to repair their tattered friendship. There certainly wouldn’t be a surprise waiting for her on their bench at eight o’clock this evening. And she most definitely would not be holding an envelope containing a photocopied poem and a handwritten note. Still, she’s had more than enough of high profile news events for one career.

She deserves this little break, petal, and she’s determined to take it. Anxious, in fact. To have just five minutes to herself to read in full Jocelyn’s note of this morning. She seems to have taken a page out of Maggie’s own playbook by embedding a message in a carefully selected poem. She’s very much looking forward to teasing Jocelyn for her patent unoriginality while, at the same time, absolutely desperate to know what that message is. So desperate, in fact, that even Jocelyn’s speech (along with imagining what might be under all that black silk and strategizing the various ways to find out) wasn’t enough to entirely distract her from thinking about the envelope in her jacket pocket.

So, tucking herself away in a secluded corner of the courthouse’s balcony patio, on a bench behind a massive concrete planter chock full of colourful annuals, Maggie gently takes the now slightly crinkled envelope from her pocket and slides out Jocelyn’s invitation. Forcing herself to read slowly, to take in every word, she starts once again with the handwritten note at the bottom of the page: “Meet me on our bench at 8? I have a surprise for you. J.”

Maggie runs her fingers over the ink. This is what she needs. This is how she wants Jocelyn to let her love her. Just by demonstrating in these little, but such important, ways that she matters to her. It’s not so hard, and Jocelyn is clearly capable of rising to the task, capable of caring for others. But sometimes, when she folds in on herself, she forgets Maggie.

But the Jocelyn who wrote this note, picked this poem, fought with the photocopier (and Maggie has no doubt it was a hard won battle), is the same Jocelyn who made her last stop before heading back to London after her summer holiday Maggie’s rented flat to drop her address in the letter box.

This is the Jocelyn she fell in love with.

Her eyes move to the top of the photocopied page, where the text of the poem begins. She wonders again how in the bloody hell Jocelyn would ever have encountered this particular poet; Maggie discovered her only recently herself, and then only through Lil. And her style isn’t quite what Maggie would have pegged as appealing to Jocelyn. Too contemporary. Too sexually overt. Still, she would never have predicted that Jocelyn would read Woolf and Sackville-West, either. Full of hidden depths and alluring mysteries, her precious barrister.

She reads slowly, allowing her breath and her body to respond at will to the words of this poem, as if they were Jocelyn’s own. For that’s surely what Jocelyn intends: 

 

> THE OASIS  
>  I thought I held a fruit cupped in my hand.  
>  Its sweetness burst  
>  And loosed its juice. After long traveling,  
>  After so long a thirst,  
>  I asked myself: Is this a drought-born dream?  
>  It was no dream.  
>  I thought I slipped into a hidden room  
>  Out of harsh light.  
>  In cushioned dark, among rich furnishings,  
>  There I restored my sight.  
>  Such luxury could never be for me!  
>  It was for me.  
>  I thought I touched a mind that fitted mine  
>  As bodies fit,  
>  Angle to curve; and my mind throbbed to feel  
>  The pulsing of that wit.  
>  This comes too late, I said. It can’t be true!  
>  But it was true.  
>  I thought the desert ended, and I felt  
>  The fountains leap.  
>  Then gratitude could answer gratitude  
>  Till sleep entwined with sleep.  
>  Despair once cried: No passion’s left inside!  
>  It lied. It lied.

 Holy shit! And she thought the poem by Mew (through which she had flirted shamelessly with Jocelyn by proxy) was provocative. She scans back up to reread the line she likes best, “I thought I touched a mind that fitted mine / As bodies fit, / Angle to curve; and my mind throbbed to feel / The pulsing of that wit.” Throbbing, indeed. She could almost come right now! It wouldn’t take much. Could there be any more perfect description of their fifteen-year dance?

Still holding Jocelyn’s message and the envelope in which it arrived, Maggie lets her hands fall to her lap as she sinks back against the concrete planter behind her. She wants nothing else in all the world right now than to take Jocelyn in her arms and never, ever let her go.

“Maggie,” she hears Olly shout from the door on the far end of the patio, “we’re back!”

“Coming!” And then she laughs out loud. A joyous, hearty sound full of anticipation. Coming, indeed.

 

***  
It’s been such a chaotic day that it’s not until Maggie is on the footpath on the way up to their bench at the top of Briar Cliff to meet Jocelyn that her doubting self again takes hold, recalling, along with the figurative stab to her heart, the last words Jocelyn spoke to her: “Now I’m alone.” On the balcony, after her mum’s funeral, when Maggie was literally standing right there, beside her. As always. And then Jocelyn just walked away, right in the middle of their conversation.

And she remembers Lil’s words: “You deserve to be treated with respect.” Damn right.

Maggie is such a jumpy jumble of contradictory emotions as she climbs up over the rise and spies Jocelyn sitting on their bench, looking out to sea, waiting for her. Her heart leaps at the gorgeous site of her love in silhouette against the golden sun in a vast blue sky, but she’s wary, too. How will Maggie explain what she needs from her? She has to do it tonight, before anything else can happen between them. What will Jocelyn’s reaction be? And what will happen if Jocelyn doesn’t understand what she’s asking of her? Will she be strong enough to let her go if she has to?

Jocelyn’s face lights up as she turns toward Maggie, who waves and closes the distance between them. Standing to greet her, Jocelyn takes both Maggie’s hands in her own and says, “Thanks for coming.”

“Well, how could I resist such an alluring invitation?”

Jocelyn grins and gently, almost tentatively, kisses her cheek, lingering just a moment too long, feeling her nose brush against the short strands of Maggie’s hair and tempted to confess her sins right then and there, before dinner. Before wine.

“Alright, enough of that,” Maggie teases, just as gently pushing Jocelyn away. “I want my surprise.” It’s best to aim for jollity, to keep things light and breezy until she’s had her say. There can be no misunderstandings tonight.

“Down here,” Jocelyn gestures, and Maggie follows her to a small clearing, on the west side of Briar Cliff, out of view of the footpath.


End file.
